This is Australia’s only chance to get the data centre boom right

From Greek mythology, a cautionary tale comes to mind with the latest announcement of a proposed $31.9 billion data centre near the small Queensland community of Dalby. Anthropic, the tech giant behind AI platform Claude, has landed a deal to build its first Australian data centre at the proposed Western Downs digital park. Premier David Crisafulli promises the investment will deliver jobs and add energy to the grid. The Condamine River may well turn to gold.

For a time.

As the mythic Midas learned the hard way, it’s a great delight when everything we touch can turn to gold, until we realise we can’t drink it, or eat it, or use it to cool our homes in the summer months. A data centre boom may be this decade’s alchemy, but it won’t matter much if rising temperatures, devastated ecosystems and dwindling water supplies make my home state uninhabitable.

The United States offers the more contemporary warning, as policymakers hit the brakes on data centre projects while they assess the long-term health, environmental and economic impacts of their rapid expansion.

Premier Crisafulli promoted Queensland’s energy security and “streamlined approval process” when courting Anthropic. Sounds wonderful, but not all are so charmed by the promise of riches.

Communities are taking a more sober view of the rapid expansion because they’re already confronting the consequences.

Between 12 January and 31 August, the Environmental Defenders Office’s (EDO) free legal advice service received a surge in data centre-related enquiries across seven jurisdictions. These pleas for help and advice represented a 250% increase on this topic since January.

In West Footscray, Victoria, residents worry that a proposed data centre expansion could increase the current and already concerning noise, light pollution and fire risks posed by diesel generators near homes and childcare services. They reached us seeking legal advice to help residents participate in the planning process.

In Hazelmere, Western Australia, a community group sought EDO’s advice about a proposal that exposed gaps in local planning laws. After the group made a submission, the proponent later withdrew its application.

Project Ares in the Northern Territory shows the extraordinary scale of what is now being proposed. The project area would cover 186,000 hectares, disturb up to 19,150 hectares of vegetation, extract roughly four billion litres of groundwater each year and include gas-fired generation capacity of up to 1,038 megawatts. It raises serious questions about water, biodiversity, climate pollution, cultural heritage and the rights of First Nations communities to have a meaningful say in decisions affecting Country.

This patchwork of inconsistent rules and regulatory gaps that hold significant long-term environmental and community impacts cannot be the way forward.

National, enforceable minimum standards should require data centre development to be environmentally sustainable, informed by the best available science and First Nations Traditional Knowledge Systems, and consistent with Australia’s international obligations.

At a minimum, national standards should require data centres to run on genuinely additional renewable energy that supports the energy transition, rather than undermining it, without increasing power prices or diverting electricity from other consumers. Operators should pay the full cost of their connections and required grid infrastructure.

Coordinated national planning must direct development to appropriate sites, with national parks, World Heritage sites, critical habitat, wetlands, high-conservation-value land and culturally significant areas and landscapes designated off-limits. Assessment should consider the full lifecycle of a data centre, including waste, decommissioning and fully funded rehabilitation, as well as the growing effects of climate change.

Communities need early, ongoing and meaningful engagement, transparent assessment, merit review rights and timely access to reliable information about resource use, pollution, biodiversity impacts and mitigation.

Getting the rules right now will give communities, governments and industry greater certainty, avoid costly environmental and infrastructure problems and ensure Australia’s digital future strengthens, rather than undermines, a sustainable and climate-resilient future.

The federal government has recognised the need for nationally consistent standards and has committed to legislating rules for large data centres. But until those standards are enforced, today’s rush of projects risk being approved under an inadequate and inconsistent framework. Queensland’s position illustrates the problem.

Until a comprehensive regulatory framework is established, we need an urgent moratorium across all states and territories on the assessment and approval of new and expanded data centres.

This would not reject data centres or the technology they support. It would be a necessary pause to establish clear, enforceable rules that protect communities and the environment while providing certainty to industry and bringing us into line with jurisdictions such as the United States that are grappling with these questions already.

Let us learn from the story of Midas that “this gift was a bane and in his loathing for gold, he cursed his prayer,” because once it’s done, there’s no turning back.

Jo Shulman is a human rights lawyer and CEO of the Environmental Defenders Office.